Chamomile Sour

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for the Hotel Monteleone Cocktail Contest is rapidly approaching, so please make sure to get your recipes in before it’s too late. Four restful days in a glorious hotel for merely submitting a simple drink recipe?! You should be submitting your recipe now, instead of reading this drivel!

For inspiration, I’ll provide you with a recipe that we’ve recently taken off of the menu at Tini Bigs, as we’ve updated the drink menu to better reflect the season.

The Chamomile Sour was something that I swore was created by someone like Audrey from Pegu Club, or Jim from PDT, but after consulting with them, we decided that is was probably a Jamie Boudreau original, inspired by Audrey’s fantastic Earl Grey MarTEAni. While the Chamomile Sour is no longer available at the bar, it is a drink that will make a return when the weather turns cold again, as not only is it a damn tasty drink, but it was extremely popular as well, unusual in that recipes with scotch and egg normally don’t go over with the general public all that well.

To make the chamomile scotch, place half of an ounce of dried chamomile flowers into a jar with a bottle of Famous Grouse. Let sit for 20 minutes, and then separate and filter the chamomile from the scotch.

Chamomile is one of those natural flavor pairings with scotch, along with anise/licorice, ginger and cherry. While this looks like a simple sour on paper, the Chamomile Sour is really a complex and refreshing libation, which I encourage you to try one day.

I hope this has inspired you to come up with your own simple creation that may very well get you four free nights at the Hotel Monteleone.

UPDATE: I’ve been asked before, and asked again where I get my frother from.You can click HERE to see how to get all the tools that I use, or you can click HERE for access to only the frother.

11 Responses to “Chamomile Sour”

Greetings! Can you let us know the exact make and model of the frother you used in the video you linked to on egg whites? I’ve searched high and low and I can only find one’s that come with that spring thing on the end.

Thanks so very much. It seems that only that one particular model of BonJour (53776) has the blade on the end. All the others have the wire/spring which I hear from other bartenders just doesn’t work as well.

Hmm, the picture is exactly the one that appears in the post entitled “Marmelade Sour” (first post on this blog, 20th November 2006). So, I’m wondering, what was exactly in this glass when the picture was taken?

Well, Mr Inspector, it’s kinda irrelevant what was in the glass as both drinks look identical when made. I could make a number of different sours with egg white and they would all look the same, just as I could make a number of drinks with bourbon and no juice and they would look the same (Manhattan style drinks). As a matter of fact, to save on costs, a large number of the pictures taken here (as in professional photography) don’t even contain alcohol, but cheaper ingredients that are of the same color.
Thanks for being such a long time reader that you caught the dual pictures in such distant posts!

A very nice drink. After I made the scotch I was worried that I hadn’t used enough flower or hadn’t let it sit long enough, as the flavor was quite subtle. But once I made the drink, the chamomile flavor was really pushed to the front by the other ingredients. I did find myself wanting a bit more lemon juice to balance all the flavors, but that could be an issue with the particular lemon I juiced.